1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to character toys, and more particularly, to a character toy fabricated with the use of one or more pattern sheets available for fabricating the character toy, wherein the pattern sheet is prepared in such a manner that the character toy""s shapes and/or poses can be formed in various manners, as desired by the customers.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Generally, a character as a toy has one or more illustrated images in connection with an object to be represented by the character, usually produced for commercial purposes. Because the character gives the customers a feeling of intimacy and/or appeals to the customers so as to invite them to purchase it, there has been a tendency that such illustrated image(s) have been more frequently employed in toys. Such toys may be referred to as xe2x80x9ccharacter toys.xe2x80x9d
However, if character toys are sold in the form of finished products, they would merely stimulate the customers to be temporarily curious about them. In the case of children, they may be readily bored of the character toys fabricated in the form of finished products. In other words, such character toys would possibly fail to arouse the customers"" interest in a continuous manner.
In an effort to solve this shortcoming, there have been attempts to arouse the customers"" interest continuously by inviting them to complete a character toy based on one or more drawings for assembling it. However, where the shape of the character when completed is predetermined, the processes of assembly would result in achieving only simple and repeated activities, and for this reason, it could not be expected from this attempt that the children""s creativity, or ability to make space, or to represent the space in three dimensions, will be developed.
Korean Patent Laid-open Publication No. 10-2001-0076128, filed by the same inventor of the present invention, discloses a paper toy using one or more pattern sheets wherein all the bodily components for building the body of a character are approximately represented on a pattern sheet, and they are cut by scissors or other cutting tools, and then fabricated so as to make a toy. Clothing parts for the toy are cut from another pattern sheet then attached to the toy, thus producing a toy wearing clothing. Through these processes, characters illustrating human beings, animals and robots can be fabricated, shapes and motions proper to the characters can be represented, and characters and shapes thereof can also be represented in three dimensions. However, even in this case, all the bodily components for the character must be first cut from the pattern sheet, by means of cutting tools such as scissors, in order to assemble them. At this time, a process of detaching all the bodily components of a character from the pattern sheet would cause a great inconvenience. In addition, the lines of each bodily component, resulting from detachment from the pattern sheet, are not so clear; for this reason, it is not easy to smoothly fabricate the character with the use of the detached bodily components.
Therefore, the present invention has been made in an effort to solve the above-mentioned problems, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a character toy which can be fabricated with the use of one or more pattern sheets for making the character toy, wherein the bodily components constituting the character toy can be detached from the pattern sheet(s) without using separate tools for detachment, and the detached bodily components can be assembled with each other at any angle as selected by the customer, thereby enabling the shape and/or pose of the character toy to be represented in various manners.
In accordance with the present invention, the above and other objects can be accomplished by the provision of a character toy which can be fabricated with the use of a component pattern sheet for the character toy on which bodily components of the character toy and component connecting plates are arranged, the bodily components being formed with at least one connecting slit, the component connecting plates being formed with a plurality of connecting slits through which the bodily components are coupled to each other at any desired angle, and a clothing pattern sheet for the character toy on which clothing elements to be put on the bodily components fabricated for the character toy are arranged, wherein the component pattern sheet and the clothing pattern sheet are processed to allow the bodily components, component connecting plates and clothing elements arranged thereon to be easily detached from the sheets